As public schools collaborate with the Head Start and child care communities to improve the quality of early childhood education and care, practitioners working with young children need guidance and support in implementing best practices in early learning. This manual provides guidance to teachers engaged in improving their programs in concert with using the Maryland-developed Standards for Implementing Quality Early Learning Programs for self-appraisal or validation. The manual provides brief descriptions of practices in early learning programs based on research and current literature. The descriptions are aligned with each of the Standards' indicators and include references to relevant literature for further study. Following introductory remarks, the remainder of the manual presents the standards in the areas of: (1) program administration (mission statement, personnel, program continuity, and program accountability); (2) program operation (environment, curriculum, instruction, and assessment); and (3) home-school-community partnership. (Contains 13 references.) (KB)